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The Wizard Of Oz (MGM film)
The Wizard Of Oz is an American musical fantasy film loosely based on the children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Notable for its use of special effects, Technicolor, fantasy storytelling and unusual characters, it has become, over the years, one of the best known of all films. The film is mostly in Technicolor, but its opening and closing sequences are in sepia-tinted black-and-white, including all of the film's credits. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs were written by E.Y. Harburg, the music by Harold Arlen. Incidental music, based largely on the songs, was by Herbert Stothart, with borrowings from classical composers. Although the film received largely positive reviews, it was not a huge box office success on its initial release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,000,000 budget. The film was MGM's most expensive production up to that time, but its initial release failed to recoup the studio's investment. Subsequent re-releases made up for that, however. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It lost that award to Gone With The Wind, but won two others, including Best Original Song for "Somewhere, Over The Rainbow". The film was released in theaters on August 25, 1939. Telecasts of the film began on November 3, 1956, re-introducing the film to the public and eventually becoming an annual tradition starting on December 13, 1959, making it one of the most famous films ever made. The film was named the most-watched motion picture in history by the Library of Congress, is often ranked among the Top 10 Best Movies of All Time in various critics' and popular polls, and is the source of many memorable quotes referenced in modern popular culture. Plot Dorothy Gale is a 12-year-old orphaned farm girl who lives a simple life in rural, dull, harsh, gray, and sepia-tinted black-and-white Kansas with her Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and three colorful farmhands: lunk-headed Hunk Andrews, seemingly cold-hearted Hickory Twicker, and blustery-but-timid Zeke. Dorothy seems slightly troubled as she is running down the prairie dirt road with her little brown and white cairn terrier dog named Toto. The two have just come from the school house, as they return to Dorothy's guardians Aunt Em and Uncle Henry who both live at an old farm up the road. When the Gales' cruel, snooty, and mean spirited neighbor Almira Gulch is bitten by Toto because she hit him on the back with a rake in defense after he got into her garden and chased her old cat, she gets a legitimate sheriff's order and takes him away to be destroyed. Dorothy is in a deep dilemma, and to her dismay, it seems as if no one at the farm cares or is interested in this as she tries to tell everyone about her problems. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are simply far too busy to be bothered by her childish nonsense as they are accessing the chicken coops and the baby chicks, while Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke are also too busy at work in the barns and pig pens and do not want to hear her rambling and ranting on about her misfortune that took place earlier that day. Hunk informs Dorothy not to go by Miss Gulch's place on her way home from school, because then Toto won't get in her garden, and Dorothy won't get in trouble, and then tells her that she isn't using her head about Miss Gulch, which makes him think that she doesn't have any brains at all, because he told her that her head isn't made of straw. When Hickory asks her why she is hurry and what's wrong, Dorothy tells him it's Toto. Dorothy follows Hickory into the barn, where he is working on the wind machine that he invented to break up winds so they don't have any more dust storms, and turns the motor on to demonstrate how the fan can send up air currents into the sky, while oil spurts out into his face, he says that it feels like his joints are rusted and believes that Miss Gulch is just a poor sour-faced old maid who doesn't have any heart left, and tells Dorothy that she should have a little more heart herself and have pity on their neighbor. Aunt Em informs him that she saw him "tinkering with that contraption", while Hickory tells her that some day they're going to erect a statue to him in their town, and she tells him not to start posing for it now. While Zeke is feeding the pigs, he asks Dorothy if she is going to let "that old Gulch heifer try and buffalo her", as he explains Miss Gulch is nothing to be afraid of because he wants Dorothy to have a little courage, since she is walking along the railing that is in between the pig pens, but she loses her balance and falls into the pig pen. Zeke reacts as he jumps into the pen and takes Dorothy's foot out of the wire, picks her up, carries her out of the pen, and puts her down with Hunk and Hickory, as he jumps out of the pen, sits down, and wipes his brow. Hunk and Hickory know there isn’t a man in the county scares easier than Zeke, so they tell him to look out because a pig's going to bite him. They laugh as Zeke says, "Now cut that out. Scarin’ a man half to death like that." Then Dorothy tries to tell Aunt Em about what happened earlier, but before Aunt Em goes back in the house, she tells Dorothy to stop imagining things because she always gets herself into a fret over nothing, and just find herself a place where she won’t get into any trouble. This causes Dorothy to sing a pretty melancholy song as she daydreams to long for a land that is a care-free and more colorful world that she heard of once in a lullaby, it is a place where she thinks there isn't any trouble, but she can't get to by a boat or a train, because it's far away behind the moon and beyond the rain, which is somewhere over the rainbow. Later that same day, Miss Gulch finally arrives on her bicycle to the Gale farm and announces to Uncle Henry that she will have Toto destroyed. Despite Aunt Em defending her niece's dog, Miss Gulch insists that Toto is now hers. She takes Toto away from a crying Dorothy and in a basket on her bike to be put down. Dorothy is devastated and runs to her bedroom heartbroken. Hunk tells Dorothy to cheer up because he knows that while Miss Gulch was riding her bicycle down the dirt road, Toto was clever enough to jump out of Miss Gulch's basket and ran back home to return to Dorothy because he's looking all over for her. Dorothy fears for Toto's life and runs away with him. After a few miles of walking aimlessly and crossing over a small bridge, Dorothy soon encounters a friendly traveling fortune teller named Professor Marvel, who stays by himself with his horse in a wagon beside the road by a dried out river. Professor Marvel guesses she has run away, informs her that a fellow named Zeke passed by awhile ago looking for her, and tells her fortune, then he takes a photograph of Dorothy and Aunt Em out of Dorothy's basket and convinces her to return home by falsely telling her that Aunt Em has fallen ill from grief over Dorothy leaving and might die from a broken heart after he looks into his crystal ball and sees a woman who is wearing a polka-dot dress and her face is careworn, while she goes into a little bedroom with poppies on the wallpaper, and saying that is she putting her hand on her heart as she is dropping down on the bed. Dorothy then realizes how selfish she has been by not thinking about her aunt's feelings and not taking her guardians into consideration. In a panic for her aunt's health, Dorothy grabs Toto and after thanking Professor Marvel she turns around and heads back to her family right away. However, by this time an unexpected deadly tornado is fast approaching the Gale farm. Aunt Em looks for Dorothy as she screams out her name. But Uncle Henry takes a frightened Aunt Em as there is no time to wait for Dorothy, and with the three farm hands, everyone safely hides in the storm cellar in the backyard. The wind howls and blows terribly as Dorothy rushes back to the farmhouse, but is unable to join her family in the locked storm cellar because the sound of the storm is too fierce for Dorothy's cries for help to be heard. Dorothy runs back into the farmhouse and takes shelter in the safety in her bedroom, but the pressure of the wind is so strong and violent by now, that Dorothy is knocked unconscious when a window frame that was blown in by the twister hits her in the head. She begins dreaming, as she lays on her bed beside Toto. Then, the tornado lifts up the farmhouse from its foundation without demolishing it and it whirls around two or three times and rises slowly through the air, as it twirls upward until it reaches the clouds and is sucked into the heart of the tornado. As Dorothy awakens minutes later to the sound of a rooster crowing at her window, she feels as if she is going up in a balloon, and is surprised to find the house being carried away by the tornado. Inside the storm outside the window, she sees barns, buggies, the family's chicken roost, an elderly lady who is knitting calmly in a rocking chair, several farm animals including Uncle Henry's heifer named "Bossie", two men rowing a boat who doff their hats to her and one happens to be her neighbor, Mr. Gallagher, and Miss Gulch, who is still pedaling her bicycle, as she suddenly makes a hideous transformation into a witch who has a crackling voice, wears a pointed hat and long cape, and is confidently flying on a broomstick. Suddenly, for a brief moment, everything stops, while Dorothy realizes that she can't stand still up in the middle of the air because she will fall. The farmhouse begins to spin and twirl in the air uncontrollably and the tornado finally releases and drops it, Dorothy screams with fright as the house is falling with gravity as it descends from the sky and crashes back onto the ground, while she thinks that she might bounce out when she lands. Moments later, Dorothy opens the door and finds herself alone in the very center of a regular little village with a bright blue sky, lovely green hills with tall stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits, meadows and banks of giant gorgeous flowers, exotic birds with rare and brilliant plumage who sing sweetly, little houses with domed roofs, streets, trees, and a fountain in the middle of a small babbling brook of blue water that leads into a little blue pond filled with giant lillypads. Dorothy then realizes she is no longer in Kansas, but must be over the rainbow as she is amazed and left speechless while she stands absolutely mesmerized by the sights of the marvelous landscaping and breathtaking beauty around her in the light and candy-coated full three-strip Technicolor dream world of the land of Oz, in which most of it is beautiful with happy go-lucky images of a very safe place. She notices a strange big pink magical floating bubble coming down the street, and there's a lady, who is dressed in an elegant glittering light pink ball gown of adorned with diamonds, inside the bubble and she steps out of it. This woman is Glinda the good witch of the north, who informs Dorothy that her house landed on and killed the wicked witch of the east by pointing her magic wand directly at the farmhouse, where there are two stocking feet sticking out which are adorned in a dazzling pair of sparkling ruby slippers. The timid munchkins come out of hiding to celebrate the witch's demise by singing during a parade and general celebration with a brass band and a regiment of cavalry. Their celebration is interrupted when the green skinned wicked witch of the west suddenly appears in a cloud of red smoke, shooting fire, and explosions and tries to claim her dead sister's powerful ruby slippers. But Glinda magically transfers them onto Dorothy's feet to keep them out of the hands of evil with a chant "Ruby slippers, slippers red; leave the feet of she who's dead. I summon my authority, and bid you serve Miss Dorothy", and then the witch of the east's bare stocking feet curl up and shrink under Dorothy's house. Glinda reminds the ill tempered witch of the west that her power is ineffectual in Munchkinland and advises her to immediately leave at once before someone drops a house on her also! So the frightened wicked witch threatens Dorothy to watch her back and promises to get her sooner or later as she tells Dorothy "I'll get you, my pretty...and your little dog, too!" before vanishing. When Dorothy asks how to get back home, Glinda advises her to seek the help of the mysterious wizard of Oz in the emerald city, which she can reach by following the yellow brick road, and warns her never to remove the ruby slippers. On her way to the city, Dorothy meets a scarecrow who is deeply unhappy because he cannot fulfill his purpose and successfully scare the black birds away because he doesn't have a brain, while he asks Dorothy if he will take him with her to see the wizard. Dorothy gladly accepts his request, while Toto licks the scarecrow's hand. At the edge of the forest, Dorothy and the scarecrow hear a groaning noise, as Dorothy asks the scarecrow if he said something, and he says that he didn't. They discover a tin man who is sad and empty inside because the tinsmith who made him forgot to add a heart to love, and the tin man tells Dorothy he noticed that she and the scarecrow were whispering, while he was singing. Dorothy tells him that she and the scarecrow were just wondering if he’d care to go with them to see the wizard, however, the tin man is worried because it's a long and dangerous journey, and it might rain on the way, but Dorothy tells him that she will keep the oil can with her. While getting properly acquainted, Dorothy sees that her new friends' faces resemble those of the farmhands, since Dorothy realizes that the scarecrow is just like Hunk, while the tin man has the same personality as Hickory. The trio are interrupted and threatened by the wicked witch, who suddenly appears on the roof of a small cottage and warns them that if they venture any further or help Dorothy in any way, she will stuff a mattress with the scarecrow and use the tin man for a beehive by summoning animated bees to fly out of his mouth, ears, and funnel hat. The scarecrow and tin man stand up to the witch, and she asks the scarecrow if he would like to play ball,as she conjures up and throws a flaming ball of fire and quickly tosses it at him, before disappearing again. The scarecrow is afraid he will burn but the tin man quickly puts out the fire with his funnel hat. Dorothy, the scarecrow, and the tin man come across the cowardly lion who roars furiously to scare them and mercilessly bullies the scarecrow and the tin man. The lion pursues to bite Toto after the dog barks and growls at him, and then has a breakdown and begins to cry and sob as he finally confesses and admits to tell them the truth about being a coward, while Dorothy notices that the lion is similar to Zeke, as she and her friends sympathize and forgive him. Even though, Dorothy's three companions think they lack respectively a brain, a heart, and courage by hoping that the wizard will also fulfill their desires, they demonstrate that they already have the qualities they believe they lack: the scarecrow is actually pretty clever and has several good ideas, the tin man is kind and sympathetic because he's the most empathetic and sobs a lot, and the lion is terrified although he is ready to face danger. After Dorothy and the lion nearly succumb to the witch's trap of a magic potion that poisons the attractive poppy flowers with a soothing smell that puts them into a deep deep sleep halfway into the meadow of the field they are crossing, Glinda uses her magical wand to make it suddenly snow out of the clear blue sky to stop the poppy field's curse so Dorothy and the lion can almost instantly wake up. The quartet all happily continue the journey and safely reach the gates of the glorious emerald city at last, once there, the companions take a tour of the beautiful city in a green buggy drawn by the rainbow horse of a different color. Then the four friends go to a beauty shop and salon called "Wash & Brush Up Co.", where there are some fashionable townspeople, who are wearing fancy green outfits and attractive robes, doing plenty of work by grooming and polishing them to freshen them up to go see the wizard, so they will look presentable for the meeting with him. In getting their makeovers, three masseurs fill the scarecrow with brand new straw because he needs to be re-stuffed with fresh straw and have his face repainted every once in a while, two men work on the tin man to get his body very well polished to remove the rust from it because he needs to be re-polished and properly lubricated and oiled every once in a while, a group of three girls let Dorothy's hair down out of its pigtails and partially tie it up with a hair bow along with giving her a subtly more puffed up dress, and another group of five girls give the lion a curly permanent for his mane that is adorned with a red silk ribbon and clip his claws. Meanwhile, the wicked witch is still very displeased that they arrived in the city unharmed and she sets out on her flying broomstick to write in the sky in thick black smoke above the city in giant letters which reads "SURRENDER DOROTHY". Soon after, the gates of the wizard's palace are thrown open and the group walk down a very tall and wide hallway that takes them the extravagant royal throne room of Oz. The four friends do eventually get see the the great and powerful wizard who appears as a giant oversized disembodied translucent green head that is surrounded by green smoke and flames of shooting fire. Each of them are allowed to speak with Oz's head one by one as he screams and shouts at them in a powerful, booming, and intimidating voice, as he states that he will consider granting their wishes if they bring him the wicked witch's magic broomstick first to prove they are worthy enough to deserve his assistance and his usage of power, but no one dares to talk back or question his authority, because the group then have no choice but to obey the wizard's commands, which sadly requires them to destroy and kill the wicked witch. Even though, Oz is largely a gorgeous fairyland paradise, Dorothy and her friends come in contact with some areas of it that aren't very nice because they are very dark, gruesome, dangerous, frightening, and full of scary villains, once they depart for the witch's castle. While they are on their way to there, the witch detects them and dispatches her army of flying monkeys who attack them and carry Dorothy and Toto away and deliver them to the witch who demands the ruby slippers. When Dorothy refuses, the witch threatens to drown Toto, so Dorothy agrees to give up the slippers, and the witch tries to remove them but is prevented by a shower of sparks, as she realizes the shoes cannot be removed as long as Dorothy is alive and plots on how to destroy her without damaging the shoes' spell. The witch snarls to Dorothy and runs over to a large hourglass filled with blood-red sand and turns it over, gleefully telling Dorothy "That's how much longer you`ve got to be alive." She puts the hourglass down, runs out of the chamber, and locks Dorothy inside. Sobbing, Dorothy calls for Aunt Em saying she is frightened, Aunt Em appears, and Dorothy tries to tell her that she is trying to get home, then the witch appears as she begins mocking and laughing at Dorothy. Toto escapes and leads Dorothy's companions to the castle. After overpowering some winkie guards and disguising themselves in their uniforms, they free her. The witch and the winkies corner the group on a parapet, where she sets the scarecrow's arm ablaze. Dorothy throws water on her friend and accidentally splashes the witch, causing her to melt into a little steaming puddle. To Dorothy's shock, the winkies are delighted and thrilled that the wicked witch is dead because it freed them from her evil spell forever, and to show their appreciation, their captain gives Dorothy the broomstick as a reward and souvenir trophy. The group make it back to the emerald city, but strangely, the wizard tells them to come back the next day. Dorothy is angered at this, so she demands for the wizard to keep his promise and send her home now! Upon their return to the wizard's chamber, Toto opens a curtain, revealing the wizard to be an a normal old man with no real magical powers, because he actually used a dark room and a few smoke powders, so he could have the group's own imaginations do the rest. Apologetic, he explains that Dorothy's companions already possess what they have been seeking all along, but bestows upon them tokens of esteem in recognition of them and gives the scarecrow a diploma, the lion a medal, and the tin man a heart-shaped clock. Also born in Kansas, he was brought to Oz by a runaway hot air balloon that was caught in a storm on a windy day at the circus fair. He offers to take Dorothy home in the same balloon, leaving the scarecrow, tin man, and lion in charge of the emerald city. As they are about to leave, Toto jumps right out of Dorothy's arms to chase after a Siamese cat with blue eyes who is meowing at him in the crowd, so Dorothy rushes off after her dog, not wanting to leave him. The wizard is unable to control the balloon, and he leaves without her. Dorothy is devastated and begins to cry as her three friends try comfort her, as she tells everyone that she may never see Aunt Em again and doesn't know what to do. The lion suggests for Dorothy to live in Oz, but she tells him that Oz will never be like Kansas. Glinda appears and tells her that she always had the power to return home to Kansas: the ruby slippers will take her will take her back home in two seconds. She previously did not tell Dorothy this because Dorothy had to realize for herself that there's no place like home and not take her blessings for granted. Dorothy then realizes she didn't have to run away to find her heart's desire, it was in front of her the entire time. After the scarecrow wonders why Glinda didn't tell Dorothy before, he says that he should have thought of it for her, and after the tin man asks Dorothy what she has learned, he explains that he should have felt it in his heart. After saying her tearful goodbyes to her friends in Oz and following Glinda's instructions, Dorothy closes her eyes, taps her heels together three times, and repeats "There's no place like home". Instantly the farmhouse whirls through the air, so swiftly that all Dorothy can see or feel is the wind whistling past her ears, as the ruby slippers transport Dorothy and the house back to the farm in Kansas. During Dorothy's return trip home, she remembers various moments during her journey in the land of Oz. When the farmhouse falls to the ground again, it leaves her in bed with a bump on her head. Waking up in Kansas, Dorothy returns to the farm and she awakens in her bedroom, surrounded by her family, the three farmhands and Professor Marvel. She claims the farmhands and Professor Marvel were in Oz, and tells them of her adventure, however, a doubtful Aunt Em and Uncle Henry then tell her that the adventure she described on her journey throughout Oz was just a dream from the bump on her head, but Dorothy is convinced that the land of is Oz a real and truly live place. This means that Miss Gulch may possibly have died in the tornado, in conjunction with the deaths of the wicked witches of Oz. A happy Dorothy hugs Toto and says, "Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!" Cast of characters Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale Frank Morgan as Professor Chester Marvel / the doorman / the cabbie / the guard / the wizard of Oz Ray Bolger as Hunk Andrews / the scarecrow Jack Haley as Hickory Twicker / the tin man Bert Lahr as Zeke / the cowardly lion Billie Burke as Glinda the good witch of the north Margaret Hamilton as Miss Almira Gulch / Gulcheria the wicked witch of the west Clara Blandick as Aunt Emily Gale Charley Grapewin as Uncle Henry Gale Pat Walshe as Nikko the head flying monkey Terry as Toto the Singer midgets as the munchkins Jerry Maren as the lollipop kid munchkin Mitchell Lewis as the winkie guard captain Trivia In January 1934, independent producer Samuel Goldwyn acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum's novel "The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz" to make a film version for approximately $60,000. He was planning it as a vehicle for his popular comic actor Eddie Cantor, who would basically “dream” his way to the merry old land of Oz and participate in some lively modern musical numbers and comedy. MGM songwriter Arthur Freed was looking for a vehicle for Judy Garland. A fan of the Oz books, Freed convinced MGM to buy those rights, beating out four other studios. MGM paid $75,000 to Samuel Goldwyn for the rights, and they also purchased the rights to the 1902 vaudeville-style stage musical by Baum and Paul Tietjen and "The Wizard Of Oz", Larry Semon's 1925 failed silent comedy that featured the scarecrow as the main character of the story, so that nobody else could release a competing version. In the fourteen books that Baum wrote about Oz, Dorothy Gale was a generic very young child with few descriptors and never given a specific age, so she could be as young as five at the time of her first visit or as old as twelve when she moves there for good, if you go by the illustrations in different books. In the 1902 stage play and 1925 film adaptations, she was quite a bit older and sexually mature teenager as some of the characters expressed a romantic interest in her, and the latter adaptation had Dorothy celebrating her eighteenth birthday and discovering that she was a lost princess of Oz! In this film, Dorothy is a pre-adolescent twelve-year-old child and her story represents a coming of age as she approaches young adulthood, and was portrayed by sixteen-year-old Judy Garland who had to wear a painful corset-style device around her torso so that she would appear younger and flat-chested while playing the role of a screen juvenile. Although it used material from Baum's book and the subsequent stage and screen adaptations, Arthur Freed wanted the film version of the Wizard Of Oz story to be a new adaptation of Baum's book that was also innovative in its own right as an integrated musical with songs that served the plot and the characters. This was because the vaudeville stage production had yielded no enduring standards and its musical numbers had little to do with the story. The writers had proposed many odd ideas and created new incidents to liven up the story in very different previous versions of the script because the original idea was to turn the story into a slapstick musical comedy, so there were a few deviations from what was written in the book. This was possibly an idea MGM may have borrowed for the movie after buying the rights to the 1925 film version of The Wizard Of Oz which had a character named Dorothy living in Kansas and a house transported to Oz via cyclone, but the resemblance to the book ends there. When the script got too bogged down, they would turn to Baum's book for inspiration and the results were generally an improvement, so it could be seen as a triumph that the final results are as close to the book as they are! Mervyn LeRoy's assistant William H. Cannon submitted a brief four-page outline where the scarecrow was a man who was so stupid that the only way he could get employment was to dress up as a scarecrow and scare away crows in a cornfield and the tin woodman was a hardened criminal who was so heartless that he was sentenced to be placed in a tin suit for eternity, and the torture of being encased in the suit had softened him and made him gentle and kind. The set designers of the film occasionally drew on the illustrations and textual descriptions in Baum's original novel, while the costume designers followed even more closely the original ideas of Baum and his illustrator W.W. Denslow. None of the Kansas scenes or the tornado scene were shown in the original trailer in order to give the impression that the whole film was in full Technicolor, and it also falsely claimed that every scene from Baum's novel was in the film, including "the rescue of Dorothy" though there is no such incident in the novel The wicked witch of the west was originally going to be slinky, sexy, and glamorous instead of an ugly hag The scarecrow's face makeup that Ray Bolger wore consisted of a foam rubber mask that was textured with a woven pattern to look like burlap cloth, it also holes cut out for his eyes and mouth. Bolger loved applause and was sentimental about Oz, so he would do his scarecrow dance in the middle of the living room of his big house in Beverly Hills and wait eagerly for approval. Jack Haley did not use his normal voice when playing the tin man, only when playing Hickory, and it contains none of the falsetto-like quality that the tin man's did. Haley saw the tin man as just another role, and throughout the rest of his career, he denounced the idea that the making of this film was enjoyable. For some reason, Noel Langley did not invent a third farmhand to correspond to the cowardly lion because the lion's Kansas alter ego, Zeke, does not show up until the final shooting script Judy Garland received an honorary pint-sized Oscar Award in 1940, which she later referred to as the Munchkin Award, it was given to her as "an outstanding performance during the past year" for her portrayal of Dorothy A sequel using the original cast was greenlighted, but scrapped after Judy Garland became such a big star and Margaret Hamilton expressed hesitation and doubts over the feasibility of such a project, since she had become an overnight embodiment of evil and was worried that her performance had scared audiences a bit too much The Wizard Of Oz was dramatized as a one-hour radio play on the Lux Radio Theater on December 25, 1950 with Judy Garland reprising her earlier role Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote a musical based on the film, which features all of the songs from the film plus new songs, it opened in 2011 at the West End's London Palladium To tie in with its sponsorship of the 1965 telecast of film, Procter & Gamble offered plastic Oz hand puppets as premiums with laundry products Zest, Downy, and Top Job On their 25th wedding anniversary, Bert Lahr's wife surprised him with a first edition copy of Baum's The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, which she found at an auction The film was first shown on television as the last installment of the CBS anthology series Ford Star Jubilee on November 3, 1956. This marked the only time that one of the film's actual actors as well as one of the children of the film's star had hosted it. Ironically, Judy Garland's first TV special "The Judy Garland Show" aired as the very first broadcast of Ford Star Jubilee on September 24, 1955. The rights to the Baum books have slipped into the public domain, but the MGM copyrights carefully protect the specific iconic looks of the principal characters of the first book as envisioned in this classic 1939 musical film version because they differ materially from the illustrations in the original book. This means having an actress that sounds and looks exactly like young Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale down to the very detail may get school or local community amateur theatre group adapters into trouble if they decide to write their own script and pay royalties to Tams-Witmark to use the music from the film, since they are not willing to forego the famous songs. This film is very loosely based on and not particularly faithful adaptation of the novel, since it only tells a small portion of the story. It is an untouchable piece of movie magic, which is an indelible classic that is one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, and continues to find new audiences with every generation, thanks to its masterful blend of colorful fantasy, lovable characters, and memorable music. In 1985, the Walt Disney studio borrowed a few elements of the movie to create their own live-action Oz film as an unofficial sequel. Return To Oz is not a continuation of this film, but is a non-musical fantasy adventure film that is a more faithful adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s books, which combines elements of about 5 different ones to create a story drawn directly from them, and includes shockingly twisted and delightfully dark plots that involve Dorothy getting electroshock therapy and an evil queen with a room full of screaming decapitated heads.Category:Movies Category:The Wizard Of Oz